Because we need poems for the bad mood days. This one has been keeping me sane all week.

[Also, please someone tell Mom: BP O’s her $25. We need chocolate milk, ribbons for pointe shoes, cashews, peanut butter, Grape-nuts, spoons (??what??) and scrapers for the cars. Someone also remind her: Just do the next right thing.]

The poem is by Tracey Knapp, who I heard read a couple weeks ago at my friendly neighborhood independent bookstore. She read from her book, Mouth, which is full of utterly hilarious and altogether heart-wrenching poems. If you’ve ever wanted to learn about how to execute humor in poetry, and especially humor alongside tender-heartedness, this book is a must-read. Or if you just need a good laugh-cry.

If you don’t want to have to squint to read the poem in the photo above (and I cannot blame you), here it is.

Friday is finally, actually-factually, MOVING DAY. Although it feels surreal, we will soon live in a house again. I will have my stuff. And by “my stuff” I mean: my books, my dictionaries (which are a class of “book” all their own), my desk, my two favorite kitchen knives, my flannel shirts and pajamas. Socks by the dozen. Scissors. Tea kettle. Gaston Bachelard.

In other words, you may not hear from me for a bit. Meanwhile, write on!

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Welcome to The Stanza

www.mollyspencer.com

Molly Spencer’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, FIELD, Georgia Review, The Missouri Review online, New England Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and other journals. Her critical writing has appeared at Colorado Review, Kenyon Review Online, The Rumpus, and Tupelo Quarterly. Her debut collection, If the house, is forthcoming from University of Wisconsin Press in fall 2019. A second collection, Relic and the Plum is forthcoming from SIU Press in fall 2020. She holds an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop, and is Poetry Editor at The Rumpus. Molly teaches at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Find her online at www.mollyspencer.com.

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